


Aphrodesia

by awomannotagirl



Category: Wonder Woman (2017), Wonder Woman - All Media Types
Genre: Allusion to Character Death, F/F, Femslash February, Loss of Virginity, Pseudo-Incest, Ritual Sex, allusion to actual incest, it isn't incest if one of them was sculpted out of clay, why can’t I live on Themyscira
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-19
Updated: 2018-02-19
Packaged: 2019-03-21 10:47:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13739268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/awomannotagirl/pseuds/awomannotagirl
Summary: Among the Amazons, taking pleasure in the body is not only joyful but holy. Aphrodesia, the sacred festival of Aphrodite, is a time when they celebrate that wisdom.Diana is about to celebrate her first Aphrodesia. She chooses to learn the path of that goddess from one who has already taught her the ways of Athena and Ares.





	Aphrodesia

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes explicitly sexual pieces are tagged or described as “nothing but sin.” This is nothing but the opposite of sin: sex as worship, sex as one of the bonds of community, the way you'd hope a world entirely made up of women would do it.

They stood together at the low wall, looking out over the dazzling aquamarine ocean. Hippolyta could tell that Antiope was here to tell her something, but she was content to let her sister work out what to say in her own time.  
  
Finally Antiope said, “Diana has asked me to be her Hand of Aphrodite.”  
  
Hippolyta nodded. She had almost expected this, but it was so soon ... “And did you agree?” she asked, rather proud of her calm and measured tone, which concealed the lurch she felt in her heart.  
  
“Not yet,” Antiope replied. “I avoided saying yes or no. I told her that any woman on the island would be honored to be her Hand, and that she had many months to decide.” She sighed.  
  
Hippolyta glanced down at Antiope’s arm where she held the top of the wall, the sinews strong, the veins prominent, the skin browned and roughened by wind and sun but still supple. “My child is a woman,” she said, letting her voice fill with amusement and looking up to her sister’s face.  
  
Antiope continued to stare out to the horizon but she gave a tiny, quick nod. “Almost,” she agreed. Her eyes fluttered closed and then opened again, and she turned to look straight at Hippolyta. “I will not answer her without knowing what you would have me do,” she said, low and intense.  
  
Hippolyta smiled, touching Antiope’s cheek with one light finger. “Do you want her?”  
  
Antiope jerked her eyes back to the distant ocean. Her jaw muscle worked and she swallowed. “She is beautiful,” she said at last. “Anyone would.”  
  
Hippolyta stroked with that one finger along Antiope’s cheekbone, over the arc of her ear, and laid her fingers on the back of her neck. “But do _you_?”  
  
Antiope huffed a short breath. “Of course.” The words were clipped and reluctant. “Still. She is almost my daughter.”  
  
“Almost, but not,” Hippolyta reminded her. “And even if she were, there is no law or custom among us that would prevent you from serving her.”  
  
“She is my sister’s daughter.” A twitch at the corner of Antiope’s mouth could have been anguish or a suppressed laugh.  
  
“We are all sisters here,” Hippolyta said. “I would not have her live her whole life without knowing the Hand.”  
  
Antiope nodded. “What would you have me do?” she repeated.  
  
“What you did for me,” Hippolyta said, and leaning forward, pulled Antiope to her and kissed her lightly on the mouth. Letting her go, she said, “You have taught her everything else. Teach her this as well.”  
  
Antiope blinked. Not tears, of course. Never tears from a warrior so fierce. “I will,” she said. The hoarseness in her voice was certainly not from emotion, and that emotion was certainly not love. 

  


 

Five months passed between Antiope’s acceptance of Diana’s charge and its fulfillment. They were the longest months Diana could remember—longer even than the months before her thirteenth birthday, when she at last received her first real sword. For this, she could not have even the incomplete relief of talking about it giddily to her friends, counting down the days, because that was the way that a child behaved. She was a woman. She had to temper her impatience and smooth down her excitement as a woman would.  
  
The older Amazons told her how years ago, when the nation was young, many girls would come to womanhood at the same time, at the first festival of Aphrodite after their eighteenth summer, and they would compare ideas, speculate together, share their fantasies and fears. Girls even experimented together with the work of the Hand before their ceremonies, though that was loosely frowned on.  
  
Diana approached the ritual alone, which was melancholy and solitary but also lent the event a rare and precious air. Older women smiled at her with nostalgia and a _knowing_ that Diana both reveled in and could hardly bear, but no one shared her anticipation or her anxiety.  
  
She saw Antiope nearly every day—was bested at arms and thrown to the ground by Antiope nearly every day—and she was quietly proud of how she managed herself in the presence of her general. She was as always respectful, and she strove to impress Antiope with her ability and effort. Antiope, on her part, was also as she had always been: stern but fond, demanding but proud.  
  
Though the days dragged, they passed. The morning of Aphrodite’s festival came, and Diana woke before the dawn with a pounding heart. Twelve hours, more or less. She tried to lie in bed and wait for the household to stir, but she couldn’t.  
She bounded out of bed and dressed, then cast about for something, anything, to do. It was just light enough to read, and so she picked up the manuscript she had been reading last night.  
  
After what seemed like hours of plowing through the text, which she had found absorbing the previous evening but which seemed lifeless now, she heard the morning gong. She went down to breakfast though she was not the least interested in eating. _Ordinary things,_ she thought, _will get me through this extraordinary day. Studies. Work. Meals._ She did not actually believe herself.  
  
The great hall was sparsely occupied this early, but Diana felt as conspicuous as if she were painted red and engulfed in a column of fire. Surely every eye in the room was on her; surely everyone knew what this day meant to her.  
  
She sat down with a bowl of warm cereal, dressed it with honey, and poked it with a spoon. To her surprise, Antiope took the chair next to hers, a wordless acknowledgment of what they were about to share.  
  
They had not discussed the ritual once after Antiope had gravely taken her by the shoulders and said to her, “I accept the great privilege of acting as your Hand of Aphrodite” months ago. Her mother’s steward had made all of the arrangements, in consultation with Diana herself. Diana was both grateful and disappointed that there had been no further conversation with Antiope. She wanted to know exactly what would happen, how it would happen, and she also wanted to be blind and ignorant and let Antiope lead her.  
  
“Are you nervous?” Antiope asked bluntly.  
  
Diana nearly choked. After a moment she was able to answer, almost calmly, “Yes.”  
  
Antiope regarded her without a smile, but with a look of amusement regardless. “So am I,” she said unexpectedly.  
  
Diana couldn’t suppress her incredulous sideways look.  
  
Antiope actually cracked a tiny smile at that. “I would like to make this perfect,” she said, sounding wistful. “But there is no such thing.”  
  
“It will be closer to perfect with you,” Diana ventured, “than it could have been with anyone else.”  
  
Antiope’s smile became just a little sad. “I hope so,” she said. “Thank you for your faith.”  
  
“You have been the Hand for others before,” Diana said, but was unsure as soon as she said it. “Haven’t you?”  
  
Antiope opened her mouth but hesitated. After a pause just a beat too long, she said, “I have often been asked.”  
  
“And?” Diana persisted, frowning. “Did you not agree?”  
  
“Only once,” Antiope answered. Forestalling the next question, she went on briskly, “We are living your story. No one else’s.”  
  
That was Antiopean code for “None of your business,” and recognizing it, Diana let her questions go.  
  
At the table next to them, she saw Aminta sit down on Ianthe’s lap, facing her, and Ianthe ran a hand up Aminta’s thigh under her skirt as they kissed. It was neither an unusual nor an extreme occurrence—Amazons were free and unashamed with their affections—but today it made Diana blush.  
  
Antiope noticed Diana’s look and then followed her eyes to the couple. A small smile flickered on her lips and she said, “The festival’s approach is increasing everyone’s ... interest.”

  


 

Everywhere Diana went that day, she saw or heard or felt something that inflamed her curiosity and anticipation. It might have been her own heightened sensitivity making her see more of such things where only ordinary behavior existed; it might have been the advent of the festival; but she also would not put it past her sister Amazons to be teasing her deliberately.  
  
Before she even left the great hall, she glimpsed Khryseis and Melantha, who had kitchen duty, kissing with soapy arms around each others’ necks, enraptured. In the hallway outside the library, Nikoleta had one of the librarians against the wall, a hand rhythmically busy under her robes. When Diana walked through the market, the fruit-seller was on her belly on her table, propped up on her elbows with her lower lip in her teeth and an expression of blissful concentration on her face, an apprentice smith behind her with one big hand spread out on the small of her back and the other working steadily into her, the muscles of her forearm rippling.  
  
Even at the proving ground, where she went to beat out some of her frustration on the practice dummies, there were couples—three couples!—coupling with lazy urgency. Sex with a sparring partner was often a reward for a sweaty afternoon of training, so Diana was not precisely surprised, but it was not convenient. One of the swordswomen, noticing her, called, “Diana! You’re a day too early! Tomorrow you’ll be able to join us.”  
  
“Tomorrow,” her partner said between pants, “she’ll be too sore to join us,” and all of them laughed. Diana fled.

  


 

The day crawled by until, suddenly, it was over. And then, it was almost upon her: it was about to happen.  
  
She arrived at the preparation chamber only a few minutes before the appointed hour of seven o’clock, and she had to walk up and down the corridor only a few times before she felt it was sufficiently close to her time to enter. The room was dimly lit with a couple of smoky, scented oil lamps, and the nine women who were already there appeared as nothing but shadows. Friendly shadows, loving shadows. She had chosen the women who would attend her there, some close friends, others who she barely knew but admired. All women whose relationship between self and body, strength and sexuality was the kind that she herself wanted to have.  
  
As she hesitated by the door, someone came up behind her, pressing close and whispering, “It is your purpose and your privilege tonight to do nothing but feel.” Then she melted away.  
  
Another came up on her right, saying, “We serve you in the name of the goddess of pleasure,” and fingers stroked gently across the back of her neck before they, too, vanished.  
  
“We serve you in the realm of the goddess of pleasure,” said a third voice, into her left ear, breath caressing her.  
  
Her women surrounded her, moving around her almost in a dance. One murmured to her, “Close your eyes, Diana. Tonight we are not the women you know; we are the handmaidens of the divine.”  
  
“Tonight you will open your body to the hand of the goddess.”  
  
She closed her eyes, and a strip of cloth covered her eyes and was fastened behind her head. Hands undressed her. Hands combed out her hair. Hands stroked over her body, smoothing it with warm oil, brushing over her shoulders, up her neck, on her face; fingers dragged over breasts, belly, thighs, arms, hands, spreading oil to every inch of her skin. Her women were thick around her, holding her up as she melted into their touches, and she realized as she leaned into them that they were as naked as she was. It was exquisite.  
  
“We have all felt the Hand of Aphrodite,” another voice whispered. “Tonight is like no other night of your life.”  
  
Diana had touched herself, of course. She had seen women pleasuring each other in twos and threes around the island; it was natural, normal, as well as sacred. This, though—hands moving deliberately all over her, bodies surrounding her, the warmth of skin and breath all through her—it was beyond her imagination. The hands touched gently over her mound, stroked up the insides of her thighs, and she whimpered. Everything was so soft, so gentle, and it was wonderful but it was torture as well; she needed _firm_ , something to rub out the ache that had built inside her all day. She tried to spread her legs, tried to chase the fingers on her thighs, but she got only soft laughter and hands that melted away.  
  
“We know,” came words into her ear. “We know what you want. Aphrodite will provide.”  
  
Then, agonizingly, amazingly, she felt lips join the fingertips on her skin. Tongues. Still maddeningly gentle, light as feathers, and everywhere. Inside her elbow. Up her spine. Over her nipple. Along the ridge of her hip.  
  
It went on and on. Her desire, her frustration, ebbed and swelled; she cried, tears leaking out from beneath the cloth over her eyes, and she sighed and moaned and laughed to the symphony of fingers gliding over oiled skin, lips touching and detaching, tongues trailing along her body.  
  
At last, she felt one handmaiden step away, then another. One by one they moved away, still present but no longer in contact. She swayed drunkenly.  
  
She felt a light cloth, a loose shift, come over her head to cover her; it clung to her oiled skin.  
  
Then firm hands took hold of hers and led her to the beaten metal door in the far wall. She knew it had to be that door because when it was opened before her, it swung almost noiselessly, quite different from the door at which she’d entered the room.  
  
Another set of hands came to her shoulders from behind, and she heard a last voice: “Remove the blindfold as you step forward. Aphrodite waits for you.”  
  
Diana stepped through the door and felt rather than heard it close behind her. She lifted her hands and drew off the blindfold, and walked slowly down the hall toward an open arch and a dimly lit room beyond.  
  
She was barely able to take in the room itself when she entered it—it was mostly a large low platform covered with a soft pad—because there was a second doorway, and standing in that doorway was Antiope. Like Diana, she was dressed in a simple white shift, hardly more than a single drape of cloth, and her skin, too, glistened with ceremonial oil.  
  
She smiled when Diana entered, and held out her hands. Somehow Diana walked forward to meet her. She felt suddenly that there could not be quite enough air in the room, because she could not get a deep enough breath.  
  
Antiope took Diana’s face between her hands. “Diana, you are so beautiful,” she said, affection thick in her voice, “and I am so proud.”  
  
Diana’s heart beat so fast and so hard that she thought Antiope must be able to hear it. Her breath came in quick, shallow gasps.  
  
“My darling Diana,” Antiope murmured. “There is nothing to fear.” Her thumbs stroked gently along Diana’s cheekbones. “I will take you through a door tonight, nothing more. What happens on the other side belongs entirely to you.”  
  
Then Antiope held her. For long moments she did nothing but hold her in her arms, and finally Diana began to relax into the warmth of her skin. Her racing heart slowed almost to normal. Then, slowly, Antiope put a hand up and stroked through her hair, and put her lips to Diana’s.  
  
The heat of all those earlier touches had settled just below her pubic bone, just where Antiope’s body pressed into hers.  
  
“I’ll take care of you,” Antiope promised, kissing her along her jawline.  
  
“I know,” Diana responded, for she did know that. It was the reason it had been so important to her that Antiope be with her now, tonight, for this moment. No matter how hard she pushed, how much she demanded, how sternly she disciplined, Antiope always took care of her.  
  
Antiope guided her gracefully down onto the platform—it was both bed and altar, Diana realized, hazily noting the carvings and candles that sacralized the space. She lay on her back, breathing deeply, feeling the soft surface below her supporting her. Antiope stretched out next to her, facing her, and slowly, gently, lifted Diana’s knee until her foot was flat on the platform, her leg bent.  
  
“We enter each other with joy, for pleasure,” Antiope murmured. “We open to each other to give and to take.” Diana felt Antiope’s hand push her thin shift up over her hips as she said the ritual words. “Will you take me into your body, Diana?”  
  
“I will take you into my body, Antiope,” Diana replied, hearing the tremble in her own voice, “before all others, to anoint me with your strength, to seal me to my own power.” Antiope’s fingers on her thigh were fire, and the pulse between her legs pounded.  
  
Antiope spread her gently open with deliberate fingertips. “I enter—ah.” She touched Diana’s swollen wetness, and her voice broke; Diana felt a surge of powerful pride at the effect she was having. Antiope closed her eyes and dropped her head to Diana’s shoulder, breathed deeply, and after a moment went on. “I enter the holiest of all shrines to bless its purpose.” With that she slid a single finger deep into Diana, as deeply as she could.  
  
It felt not at all how Diana had imagined it would; it was much, much better. There was one sharp twinge, over so quickly she thought she might have invented it, though it was enough to make her jerk her hips and cry out. After that, though, the sensation was entirely of that sweet, open ache, focused and inflamed by the delicate touch of one slim finger.  
  
Antiope remained inside her a moment longer, probing and stroking, and then she pulled out and held up her hand. In the light of the candles they could both see the dark thread in the glistening slickness.  
  
Antiope smiled, catching Diana’s wondering eye. “Perfect,” she said under her breath, and reached up and drew her finger from Diana’s sternum to belly button, decorating the white cloth with a pinkish streak.  
  
“Now,” Antiope said, raising up onto her knees and pulling her own shift over her head, displaying the cords and planes of muscle and the tight knots of her nipples, “I will begin to teach you Aphrodite’s wisdom.” She leaned over Diana, half protector and half predator, and pushed the nearly negligible piece of cloth over her head.  
  
Diana raised her arms, letting Antiope remove the only remaining barrier between them, and gave a high, soft moan as she felt the naked skin of another person slide over her own for the first time.  
  
She felt Antiope’s muscled thigh settle between hers, and the sensation closed her eyes for her. She lay, acutely aware of every place that her body touched Antiope’s—breast, belly, and oh the pressure of that thigh against her sex—and waited for what seemed like forever for Antiope to begin. Antiope, however, held herself over Diana, moving only with her breath, nuzzling her cheek slightly but otherwise content apparently just to drink in their closeness.  
  
Diana was not so content. She could hear her own breath becoming a pleading whine; she pushed her hips up, slowly but surely, grinding into Antiope, searching for more. Immediately Antiope’s thigh melted back and away, denying her the sensation she craved.  
  
She fluttered her eyes open to find Antiope gazing into her face with an affectionate smile. “There is only one first touch with every lover,” Antiope said, letting her fingertips land on Diana’s cheekbone. “You should savor it.” She kissed Diana softly on the lips, and murmured, “There is a purpose to this delay. You want your lover wet and ready for you. You want her to _need_ you before you touch her.”  
  
Diana whimpered. She already needed. Antiope chuckled and with one powerful arm raised herself just off Diana’s body, nosing along her neck and whispering soothingly at Diana’s cry of protest. “I know, my darling. You have been so patient. I will not make you wait long. But I want you to feel this,” and she drew her fingertips so lightly over Diana’s shoulder, up the column of her throat, back down between her breasts. “I want you to feel the way a gentle touch can be like fire.”  
  
It was like fire, liquid fire, as the pads of those fingers continued around the swell of one breast, over to the other, one fingertip just brushing a nipple. Though Diana was barely being touched, she had never felt anything so clearly or profoundly.  
  
“Every woman wants to be touched differently,” Antiope said as she drew her fingers down, over the soft swell of Diana’s abdomen. “Start with gentleness, unless she has told you otherwise. You can always make your touch firmer as you go”—Diana gasped as Antiope’s nails raked up her belly from pubic mound to sternum—“but if you startle her with roughness, that will forever be her first memory of you.” She added, half under her breath, “Rough can come later.”  
  
Antiope’s hand moved over her hip, and Diana drew her foot up, lifting her knee, opening her legs, as Antiope pressed her flat palm into the muscle of her ass. Then nails again, dragging up the back of her thigh, and Diana pushed her hips up involuntarily, a choked groan in her throat. Antiope caught her mouth with her own and claimed her lips and tongue; she kissed Diana slowly, thoroughly, exploring every sigh and response. At the same time her hand stroked up and down Diana’s thigh, the front, the back, thumb dipping into the hollow of her groin, fingers playing delicately down the cord of her hamstring to the back of her knee.  
  
Diana had been kissed before. Even though every woman around her had known her since her birth, she also lived in a community that was free with physical affection, and she was a gregarious, tactile person. She loved to kiss and be kissed. But she had never kissed like this, melting into another’s mouth, molding her body to another’s.  
  
Antiope pulled away to look at her, her eyes shining and bright. “Sweet girl,” she said hoarsely. She returned to Diana’s lips, nipping them in her teeth, soothing the gentle sting with the tip of her tongue.  
  
“Oh, Antiope,” Diana said, her voice breaking with need. “Antiope.” She didn’t even know what she needed. Her entire body wanted; she would have gladly let herself be crushed beneath Antiope if the other woman’s weight would have done it.  
  
Antiope responded by letting her lips go and kissing and licking down Diana’s neck, along her shoulder, down at last to her breast. Here she lingered, cupping the curving flesh in one hand while she took Diana’s nipple between her lips. At first she merely held the straining nipple while she touched it delicately, in a rhythmless pattern, over and over with the tip of her tongue; then, as if she couldn’t help herself any longer, she took most of the breast into her mouth, sucking and scraping and tonguing, devouring.  
  
Diana felt the wet heat seize her and she cried out, arching up off the bed into the exquisite clamp of Antiope’s mouth. Then Antiope let her mouth slacken, let Diana’s breast slide from her lips, bringing up her hand to catch the slick nipple between thumb and finger, and turned her head to the other side. She nosed the stiff tissue of the other nipple, brushed it with her lips, and then with a hungry growl sucked it into her mouth.  
  
For several minutes she alternated between mouth and fingers, turning from one nipple to the other. Diana heard the mewling cries that shuddered from her throat with distant surprise. She had never found her nipples particularly sensitive to her own touch, but this was as if she inhabited a different body, raw and tender to every stimulation. She was desperately, wonderfully sore by the time Antiope let her mouth pop off a final time and buried her face in Diana’s neck.  
  
Diana felt Antiope’s teeth on the cords of muscle in her neck as she also felt her fingers move between her legs and part her flesh. “Oh gods, Diana,” came the indistinct murmur as her fingers slid through Diana’s swollen, sodden cleft, sounding almost as wild as Diana felt herself, “so ready, Diana, so wet ...”  
  
“Please,” Diana begged into the ear of her teacher and commander. “Please.”  
  
Whether it was Diana’s entreaty or she had reached her own breaking point, Antiope finally, finally pushed inside her. She held there for a moment, deep and full, so different, so much more than that first gentle entry—now Diana could feel herself pull and clench, could feel the thousand sensations flooding that short, tight passage: the aching stretch at her entrance, the purposeful tickle along her muscled walls, the dark pulse of pleasure where Antiope pressed into the center of Diana’s body with the tips of her fingers.  
  
Antiope began to move her hand. It was slow at first and the movement minute, but Antiope gradually (too gradually, excruciatingly gradually) increased both her tempo and the range of her motion, until Diana was being fucked furiously and powerfully, the suck and slap of wet flesh loud in the small room.  
  
It was incredible. All of it: Antiope’s fingers (two and then three) inside her, Antiope’s body pressed against her, her nakedness, her openness, the wildness of the sounds torn from her throat.  
  
She realized that she was babbling broken, incoherent nonsense into Antiope’s hair: _that’s good, so good, oh yes, I couldn’t, I didn’t, I want, oh please ..._ She would have been embarrassed but for the fact that she was hearing Antiope murmuring just as senselessly: _you perfect girl, so lovely, so good, so sweet ..._  
  
She didn’t want this to end, ever, this exquisite pleasure, but at the same time she could feel a rich, electric tension growing at the center of her body, and she wanted that too: she wanted it to explode and pour through her whole being. She knew that it would. It grew, and grew, and Antiope moved faster and harder inside her as if she could feel it building. The wet rhythm of Antiope’s fingers plunging into her was joined by a low, pleading, wordless sound from her own throat.  
  
And then, with no more warning, Diana was flooded with light and warmth and a pure, liquid thrill that she had never felt before. Her muscles clenched and she clutched Antiope close, pulling her up to hold her as Antiope’s fingers slipped from her.  
  
They lay, breathing heavily, and Diana reveled in the weight of Antiope’s body pinning her to the sacred spot.  
  
Finally Antiope raised up slightly to look down into Diana’s face. “How do you feel? Did I hurt you?”  
  
Diana laughed. “I feel wonderful. It didn’t hurt at all, it only felt wonderful.”  
  
Antiope reached above the bed and took down a clay jar. “Still,” she said, smiling a little wickedly, “we have only just begun and we have a long night ahead.” Dipping her fingers into it, she showed Diana the salve it contained. “This too is a gift from Aphrodite, only for tonight. It will soothe and heal you, and we will be able to make love over and over.”  
  
The salve did feel good, warm and slightly tingly, and it did soothe, but its best property was definitely Antiope’s application of it. She smoothed the salve all through Diana’s cleft, from her opening to the base of her clit, and Antiope’s firm fingers sliding along her vulva made Diana laugh out loud with sensual joy. Then Antiope took another fingerful of salve and pushed it into Diana’s cunt, twisting and stroking to smear it everywhere inside her, and Diana gave a whimper.  
  
Antiope smirked. “Ready again already?” she murmured. Diana could hardly believe it herself, but she nodded. Antiope kissed her once, gently, and then pushed purposefully into her.  
  
Diana threw her hands out and over her head, seized and twisted the sheet they lay on, anchoring herself to the bed and to her body. She remembered the words she had heard in the chamber before she had come here—it was her purpose and her privilege tonight to feel, to do nothing but feel. She was being served by and in the name of the goddess of pleasure. She would learn every secret of her body she could in one short night, beginning with as many of the infinite shades of fingers-in-cunt as one woman could show her. She let her body relax, let her legs open wide, and took in the worship of her sex; took, and took, and took.  
  
Antiope knelt between her spread knees, forehead touching her belly, and fucked her. It might have been another gift of the goddess or her own natural stamina, but she was apparently inexhaustible. Every once in a while, she would ask a question— _Do you want this harder? Deeper?_ —or make an observation: _I’m pushing up toward your belly button. Do you feel how different it is from when I was touching the entrance of your womb? Do you like it?_ She fucked Diana deep and slow, deep and fast, in a short shallow flutter. She turned her over onto her elbows and knees and fucked her from behind. She added her mouth, her other hand, Diana’s hand, and Diana came, and came, and came again.  
  
In the moments Diana had to take to recover, Antiope talked about what it meant to be a good lover. Most of it was wisdom Diana had already read or heard, but it was much more powerful coming from the woman whose skin pressed up against her own.  
  
“Some of your partners will want you to pleasure them with intense, extreme sensations. Outside of the bed it might be called pain. But here it is merely a different call of the goddess, to those who enjoy it.” Followed by a wicked chuckle and “Let me show you what I mean.”  
  
“You need not rely entirely on your hands and mouth. Even if you could produce every sensation your lovers could want—which you cannot—there are tools of pleasure that can be wonderful for you both.” And then introduced her to an oiled olive-wood phallus that, indeed, gave her both a new sensation and a new experience of Antiope.  
  
“You must never be afraid to ask for what you want. Any woman who deserves you will want to know what pleases you. And likewise, you must ask your partner what she wants, and listen to her when she tells you. Her words, and her body as well.” She smiled gently, touching her fingertips to Diana’s lips, and went on, “I have known the bodies of many women, but each new lover is different and needs to be learned. Can you tell that I’m watching you as I touch you? You tell me so much about what you like with the look on your face, your breath, the sounds you make. The way you move your hips to meet me.”

  


 

Diana finally, shyly, asked for the one thing she’d wanted since that first shattering climax. “Antiope. I want to feel _you_. I want to touch you. That too is an aspect of being my Hand, isn’t it?”  
  
She felt, instantly, Antiope’s stiffening and withdrawal. She said nothing as the other woman closed her eyes and held an inner conference. Finally Antiope sat up on her heels and looked down at Diana, full in the face.  
  
“It is difficult for me, sweet girl. It is far easier for me being the one who gives than the one who takes.” She breathed deeply, her gaze flitting briefly skyward, before she returned to Diana and said, “But you are correct. It is part of your right in this ritual.”  
  
A sudden sick horror seized Diana. She knew Antiope only as her indomitable general, the fiercest of the fierce, the freest of the free; but she knew the history of the Amazons. Antiope had also been a slave, beaten, humiliated, raped.  
  
And so she could not, would _never_ , force Antiope into anything that felt like even a shadow of that long-ago part of her life. She raised up on one elbow and said urgently, “I’ll take nothing from you that you don’t want to give. Nothing. I don’t care about the ritual, I don’t care about the _gods_ —”  
  
Antiope put a finger to Diana’s lips, smiling faintly. “And I would give you nothing that I could not give freely.” She leaned down and kissed Diana gently. “There is much that you can only learn with your hands on me, and that too will be my honor and my pleasure.”  
  
Tears pricked in Diana’s eyes. “It’s not pleasure for you, Antiope, I saw your face.”  
  
“Oh, Diana, darling,” Antiope replied instantly, concern knit into her brow. “I am so sorry you thought—that isn’t what I was thinking, love, of _course_ it is pleasurable—” She broke off, seeing something in Diana’s face, perhaps disbelief. She took a moment in which Diana could see her tactician’s mind working through every angle of the situation, breaking it down so that she could explain it clearly. “I don’t hesitate because I don’t want this, nor because it feels like weakness. You have just felt how powerful it is to take someone into your body, have you not?”  
  
Diana couldn’t suppress a smile at that. Yes, she certainly had.  
  
“I am private, Diana, and I am sparing with my favors. If I expect the women of this island to trust me with their lives, and I do, I cannot allow myself to be familiar and ordinary. I cannot be a casual lover. That is the habit of hundreds of years, Diana, a span of time you cannot yet comprehend.” She dropped her eyes briefly but brought them back up as she went on, “And yes, there is vulnerability in allowing another to be in command of your deepest responses. You have felt that tonight, too. It is not something I would give to very many people.” She looked directly at Diana, directly into Diana, as she said, “I will give it to you, because you have earned my trust.”  
  
Overwhelmed, Diana could barely stutter out, “Are you sure?”  
  
“Diana, you are showing me that you know without being taught the most important thing I could teach you. You are thinking of my needs above your own. And yes, darling girl, I am sure.” Tenderly, she traced Diana’s eyebrows with light fingers. “I would not be willing for every woman, but for you, I am sure.”

  


 

The moment that Diana entered Antiope, hearing her soft sigh as she felt the warm, wet grip of her, was one that she would not have traded for any other in her life—not even the moment that Antiope had first filled her.  
  
“Slow to begin with,” Antiope murmured into Diana’s ear. They had chosen to mimic the arrangement of their bodies when Antiope had taken Diana: Antiope lay on her back, her legs spread open, Diana kneeling between her thighs leaning over her as if in worship with her fingers buried in Antiope’s cunt. “It’s been a long time since anyone did this.” She circled her clit with her own fingers, smiling with her eyes half-lidded as she felt Diana’s fingers sliding in and out of her.  
  
Diana felt clumsy at first, but as she had all night, Antiope gave her constant direction and affirmation. “Bring your fingers along the front wall, here, up toward where my hand is on my belly—yes, oh, yes, that’s ... Do you feel the ridges there? Can you feel where it is softer—there. Oh yes, _there._ Crook your fingers a little, like— _yes_.”  
  
Diana watched in awe as stroking and pressing inside her teacher brought increasing need and less and less self-control. Her gentle movement in and out became less and less gentle in response to Antiope’s urging. Antiope’s fingers on her swollen clit moved firmer and faster as Diana gradually worked deeper and more forcefully inside her. When Antiope ceased to be able to speak, resorting to rough cries and moans, Diana’s heart swelled with wonder and pride.  
  
Then Antiope opened her eyes wide and pulled Diana’s head up so that they looked directly at each other. “Hard,” she said urgently. “Harder.” And Diana wrapped one arm around Antiope’s waist, pulled her close, and fucked her harder, blessing every god for the long hours of archery and swordfighting that gave her shoulders and arms the power to please this woman.  
  
When Antiope shouted and clenched Diana’s fingers, clamping a steel grip onto Diana’s wrist to hold her still deep inside, Diana’s rush of pleasure and pride rivaled the ecstasy of her own orgasm.  
  
They lay entwined together, Antiope lacing her fingers through the ones that Diana had just had inside her. “This is a lesson that I would never want to deprive you of,” Antiope said dreamily. “Thank you for reminding me.”  
  
“What?”  
  
Antiope hummed in her throat as she stroked Diana’s back. “How satisfying it is to satisfy another.”  
  
Diana giggled into Antiope’s shoulder; she couldn’t help it.

  


 

Antiope’s mouth, her mouth, Antiope’s fingers, the wooden cock, her cunt and her clit, her nipples, Antiope’s teeth, salve and oil and their own lubrication: the night melted into a messy blend of images and sensations, tastes and smells, the beauty of their bodies together, the beauty of the secret flesh between their legs, licking, fucking, nipping, sucking, scratches and kisses and bites. Antiope’s imagination was as inexhaustible as her energy, and she relentlessly tried Diana’s flexibility and strength.  
  
Diana was ravaged on her back, on her belly, on her knees riding Antiope’s fingers, standing with the wall rough on her back, standing with her hands to the wall. She learned the joy of a tongue softly, gently, thoroughly exploring her sex, building her slowly to a climax, and the equal joy of the same mouth lashing and sucking, attacking and consuming her. Her scalp was tender from Antiope’s gripping her hair and grinding her cunt into Diana’s face. Finally, sated, exhausted, she fell asleep with Antiope still inside her.  
  
She woke some time later to find the room dark and quiet. Antiope was gone. Diana felt around, but she couldn’t find her discarded shift; it hardly mattered, she decided.  
  
She felt her way down the hallway back to the room where she had been anointed and prepared, so many hours ago. Here a few candles burned, and she found her clothes folded neatly, waiting for her. She dressed slowly. Her legs trembled a little, from exhaustion and the long night’s effort, she supposed.  
  
She was different. She had been served and she had learned; she knew a thousand joys of her body that she had only hazily imagined before; but more than that, she had been adored, worshiped, made to feel precious and sacred. She would never again feel her body’s yearning as anything but holy.  
  
She walked through the palace thoughtfully. There were few people about, it seemed, and while she’d expected to see sly teasing on the faces of her sisters, those she did see showed only respect and warmth.  
  
She returned to her own chamber and slept soundly for another few hours. When she finally awoke for good, it was early afternoon. She lay in her bed for a moment or two, but she needed to see Antiope. She wanted nothing more than to be wrapped in Antiope’s embrace for the rest of her life. She feared that that was quite impossible.

  


 

She found Antiope in her study, painting a map to accompany one of the many histories she had written. Antiope rose, smiling, and held out her arms.  
  
Diana rushed into them, burying her face in Antiope’s shoulder, feeling—she wasn’t even sure what she was feeling. Confusion, certainly, because she had shared the most profound experience of her life with this woman who held her; she had entered womanhood last night at Antiope’s hands; but she did not know if that made her Antiope’s lover. She no longer knew quite what she was.  
  
“It’s all right,” Antiope murmured to her. “It’s all right. I’ve got you.” Not until she heard these words of comfort did Diana realize that she was crying.  
  
A day ago she would have been embarrassed to weep in front of her general. Today she felt closer to Antiope than to any other person she had ever known. “I don’t know why I’m crying,” she confessed.  
  
Antiope shook her head slightly. “I can’t tell you,” she said, “but—enormous events bring enormous feelings.”  
  
Diana considered this. “I’m not sad,” she said. “I don’t think so.”  
  
She could feel Antiope’s smile against her temple. “Tears are not always from sadness.”  
  
Diana pulled away enough to look into Antiope’s face. “Am I—Would you—” And then she stopped. She had been about to ask Antiope to kiss her, but the question suddenly didn’t feel right. She didn’t actually want Antiope to kiss her, not the way she had last night. She felt her brow knit, betraying her bemusement.  
  
Antiope’s lips curved in a slight, sad smile. “The things that happen in the chamber of Aphrodite change you,” she said, her voice low and serious. “But not always in the way you think they will, in the moment.” She stroked Diana’s cheek with her knuckles. “I will always be your Hand,” she went on. “That is sacred and unchanging. But having been your Hand, it is not right that I be your lover in the ordinary world. We will be more than what we were to each other. But not lovers.” Then she did kiss Diana, softly, on the forehead.  
  
They held each other for several long moments afterward, Diana absorbing this new truth, Antiope lending Diana her strength.  
  
Finally Diana pulled away. “I will need some time to think about what this all has meant.”  
  
Antiope nodded. “You will. One of the many paths Aphrodite sees us on,” she said, “is puzzling out the ways that our deepest relationships change and grow. How we love people who are not our lovers.”  
  
Diana nodded.  
  
“We have all our lives to do it,” Antiope said, smiling.

  


 

All their lives was not as long as either of them expected.  
  
After Antiope had been laid in her tomb, after Diana and Hippolyta and Menalippe and many other weeping warriors had offered libations, after the hours of songs and poems and stories in Antiope’s honor, Diana and Hippolyta returned to Antiope’s rooms. They stood in the entrance to the antechamber where she had received guests, looking around; they had each expressed a desire to have something of Antiope’s to remember her by, but now that they were here among her things, none of them seemed to hold the essence of who she had been. _Who she is,_ Diana insisted to herself, _who she still is._  
  
“What here could help you remember her?” Diana asked in a soft voice, hoarse from her tears.  
  
“Nothing could make me forget her,” her mother replied.  
  
Hippolyta walked slowly through the rooms: library, study, anteroom, bedchamber. She drew a finger along the volumes in the library, some so old that they were scrolls, some handmade, leather-bound books, but she took none off the shelves where they lay. She picked up one of the game pieces from the strategy board in the study, smiled at it, then put it back. When she opened the chest at the foot of Antiope’s bed, she chuckled. She drew out two plain pieces of linen, one yellowing with age, the other old but not quite so ancient. She handed the newer one to Diana. “I had no idea Antiope was so sentimental,” she said. “I believe this was yours.”  
  
Diana took the cloth from her mother’s hands and spread it out. It was a thin once-white shift, stained with oil and sporting a faded brownish streak. She clutched it in her fists and felt the tears welling up once more; in a helpless attempt to stave them off, she glanced over at Hippolyta, who was staring at an identical garment in her hands.  
  
“This,” Hippolyta said, her voice rough, “was mine.”  
  
_Only once,_ Antiope had said. Of course. Diana had wondered now and then over the years who the other woman had been who Antiope had served; of course it was another—the other—to whom she had committed her service for life. Antiope had loved fiercely, loyally, permanently, but narrowly. She had been generous to everyone, intimate with very few.  
  
Diana put her arm around her mother’s waist and drew her close, letting her head rest on Hippolyta’s shoulder. She had expected to feel at least a prickle of jealousy, when and if she discovered the other whose story Antiope had partially written. What she felt was gratitude for an even stronger connection to this woman, to whom she was already bonded as powerfully as any person could be to another.  
  
Hippolyta, after a moment, let her own head fall to Diana’s, resting her cheek on her daughter’s hair, and they stood in silent contemplation.  
  
“She was the best of us,” the queen said at last. “We will never see her like again.”  
  
“We will see her again,” Diana answered with complete confidence.  
  
“We will,” Hippolyta agreed. After another silent moment, she said, “It makes the hold of this life less compelling, knowing that she awaits us beyond it.”  
  
Diana nodded against her mother’s shoulder. As soon as Hippolyta had said the words, she recognized their truth. She would still love this world and fight for everyone’s right to its beauty, but for the first time she felt at peace with the certainty that her time within it would come to an end.  
  
Hippolyta took a deep breath. “Are you ready?” she asked. “I don’t think there is more for us here. We should leave Antiope’s chambers as they are for Menalippe.”  
  
Diana nodded again. She took her mother’s hand as if she was a little child again, and the two women went out into the palace, one hand holding the other’s, one hand holding a memory of a woman who had loved them both beyond the body and into the soul.


End file.
